Least Squares estimation of two ordered monotone regression curves

TL;DR

This paper develops a method for estimating two ordered isotonic regression curves using Least Squares, with an iterative algorithm and a real-world application in mechanical engineering.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for jointly estimating two ordered monotone regression curves with an efficient iterative algorithm and a generalized PAVA projection.

Findings

Characterization of the Least Squares estimators under order constraints.

Development of an iterative projected subgradient algorithm for estimation.

Application to real mechanical engineering data demonstrating practical utility.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the Least Squares estimators of two isotonic regression curves $g^\circ_1$ and $g^\circ_2$ under the additional constraint that they are ordered; e.g., $g^\circ_1 \le g^\circ_2$. Given two sets of $n$ data points $y_1, ..., y_n$ and $z_1, >...,z_n$ observed at (the same) design points, the estimates of the true curves are obtained by minimizing the weighted Least Squares criterion $L_2(a, b) = \sum_{j=1}^n (y_j - a_j)^2 w_{1,j}+ \sum_{j=1}^n (z_j - b_j)^2 w_{2,j}$ over the class of pairs of vectors $(a, b) \in \mathbb{R}^n \times \mathbb{R}^n $ such that $a_1 \le a_2 \le ...\le a_n $, $b_1 \le b_2 \le ...\le b_n $, and $a_i \le b_i, i=1, ...,n$. The characterization of the estimators is established. To compute these estimators, we use an iterative projected subgradient algorithm, where the projection is performed with a "generalized" pool-adjacent-violaters algorithm (PAVA), a byproduct of this work. Then, we apply the estimation method to real data from mechanical engineering.